I feel a little lost for words on how to begin this post about Guatemala. There is so much to say, but in short we were unsure what to expect of Guatemala and in many ways Guatemala surprised us. We are so thankful that we came and we all agree that we would like to come back some day.
When we had originally planned this trip prior to COVID, one of the things we were looking forward to was meeting our sponsor children and seeing if we could volunteer somewhere. However, COVID changed all that and we weren’t able to do some of the visits and volunteering we were hoping to do because certain countries and locations still aren’t open to visitors. Thankfully the World Vision Youth Ambassador from Guatemala from Julia’s year is both a worship leader and event coordinator for one of the largest churches here in Guatemala and she has many contacts in the area. She was able to use her contacts to allow us to help out in a few places. She was also a wonderful guide, host and friend for our time here.
We arrived early evening and were picked up by our YA friend. She took us to this new shopping area called Cayala which was designed to look like a colonial village and was fully decked out in Christmas decorations and lights. It was also our first surprise of Guatemala City: it has heavy American influences and a strong middle class. Many parts of it could pass for being somewhere in the States.
The malls we went into were bigger, fancier and newer than the ones we have at home!
The mall even had a Christmas photoshoot studio.
However, like many developing countries with a growing middle class, it is a case study in contrasts. On the one hand you have this fancy mall with all the typical food court restaurants, but than right next to our brand new apartment building we stayed in, there is still a little tortilla shop where they make tortillas by hand in traditional dress. In one neighbourhood there would pretty nice new houses, with your supporting typical North American strip malls and restaurants, and then right across a bridge and over the valley are much poorer neighbourhoods. Both the food court Mixta (a sausage with avocado and boiled cabbage (sauerkraut) on a tortilla) and the tortillas “made with love” were great.
Even just driving around town there was the contrast. On the one hand, there were these massive US fast food restaurants; Mc Donald’s that where multiple stories and could sit probably a couple hundred people, and even a 2-story KFC. And on the other hand, a lot of the public transportation were these old repurposed school buses painted lots of different colours and dubbed “happy busses” by the girls.
Our first volunteer work was at an orphanage in Guatemala city where we could play with the kids, paint, and do a little presentation about Canada for them. Since we didn’t have paint clothes, our friend had T-shirts made for us with a Canadian flag on one sleeve and a Guatemalan flag on the other. She then took us to Megapaca, which is the Guatemalan version of Winners, so we could find some discount slacks/jeans. Marika and Julia liked their “paint” pants so much, they decided to try and be super careful so that they could keep them afterward.
In the front rooms there was only trim painting work to do, so the girls played with the kids while Julia and I painted.
For the large walls, the girls jumped in with the rollers.
On the recommendation of our YA friend, the girls put together a presentation to show to the kids. They explained about the four seasons of Canada (which they have discovered they miss!) showing some pictures and finishing with a video showing all bunch of different winter activities. They focused on snowflakes, telling the kids that each snowflake has 6 sides, but each is a unique pattern. In the same way God made us similar, but each unique.
They ended by doing crafts with the kids, teaching them how to make snowflakes out of paper. It was a big hit, the kids loved it and the staff hung up the snowflakes to add to their Christmas decorations.
We had a wonderful time there and ended up finding out later that it was such a God thing. All of this ended up being a last minute (i.e. day before) scheduling since the location we were originally supposed to go to pulled out. While we were there, our YA friend’s contact was running a teaching class for the community parents so it was a pretty busy place. Mid-morning the social service agency dropped in for a surprised visit. Turns out having a teaching class and having foreigner volunteers is a big plus and the orphanage got a glowing report. No one could have planned that if they tried.
Next up it was back to our AirBnB with huge bags of candy that we sorted, organized and then bagged into small bags to hand out to about 190 kids the next day.
The agency we visited ran a school/community center for kids in a poorer area of the city. Mostly they did supportive education like tutoring but also life skills since many kids come from families that deal with alcoholism or addictions.
We got to help out with their Christmas celebration by singing for them after the pastor give a Christmas message and then we handed out the candy and a gift bag provided by the agency. We didn’t feel like we were helping out as much here as the previous day but they told us that just our presence was a positive thing. I guess there is something about foreigners that gives credibility to an organization and parents are more likely to send their kids there because of that.
Our last outing was over two days and was for the same agency, but in a different community. This community was a rural village about 1 hour outside the city. They provided some of the same educational support to complement the public school system, but here it was very different circumstances. Most kids came from good supportive families, but in the rural setting where working in the fields is the priority, education isn’t seen as a necessity so their challenge is to really teach the community and the kids the importance of finishing school and helping to make that happen.
We were invited again to sing after the Pastor spoke but we had decided the day before that our Christmas carol wasn’t upbeat enough for the kids and singing it in English didn’t help. We remembered the Christmas song “Oh What a Special Night” that our girls did quite a number of years ago. It is about animals singing for Jesus birth and is kind of sappy kids song but is full of actions and animal noises and much easier to translate and learn in Spanish. Our friend helped us explain it and much to everyone’s amusement, some of our North American animal noises are not the same as theirs. The song was a hit.
Singing animals aside, our primary reason to be there was to help paint as much as we could of three new classrooms that were built. They were big rooms and over the course of one afternoon, and part of the next day we got one room completed with two coats, and the a second room with two coats of the large top colour.
It was fun to help out in this way and both Julia and Marika successfully saved their Megapaca pants! Annika’s shirt – not so much!!
In our drive out of the community after the first day, Julia noticed and commented about how tall the corn was. Our friend explained that growing corn was important and from their indigenous culture they are considered “children of the corn”. Julia commented that it was kind of funny that the corn was so tall and the people so short. It become the running joke of the rest of our time there. So of course, we had to stop the next day to get pictures of the tall corn! Some of them were pushing 15′ tall.
On our last day back, we also stopped at a mirador looking out over Guatemala City. There was a few little restaurants there so we had “tea time” Guatemalan style with atol drinks and snacks.
Atol is a warm drink and we tried three different flavours: corn, rice and cinnamon, and rice and chocolate. They are all thick and creamy.
It can be pretty fun trying new foods!
Even though most of our time was split preparing for volunteering, volunteering, and school, we still got a chance to spend some time with our friend in Guatemala City itself. One night she took us to a park that was all decorated for Christmas. The park led to a great lookout of the city and with one of the many volcanos of Guatemala as a backdrop. We got there just before all the lights turned on.
It was a bit of a mind shift for us to be walking past flowers at the same time as Christmas lights.
We then went to her house for a traditional tamale dinner. Yum!
The perfect close to the night was going through our friend’s pictures from the 1997 World Vision Youth Ambassador trip and off course telling stories, sharing memories, and the occasional “is that you mom?” comment.
In that rare category of “something good that came out of COVID”, Youth Ambassadors from different years started engaging with each other over Zoom. One such group that Julia joined was a Sunday morning prayer group. One of the participants was another girl from Guatemala from a different year from Julia. So on Sunday, we met with her and her family.
Our day started with attending the mega-church that the Youth Ambassador from Julia’s year works at. She was engaged with the children’s Christmas program for multiple church services that day so couldn’t join us. Thankfully we have multiple Guatemalan friends!
After church they were asking what we wanted to do. We had already been outside the city and had driven through the downtown and various parts of the city so we asked for their suggestions. They asked our girls if they liked rides and on the affirmative, they took us to this little but really nice theme park in the city. They said it had good restaurants and lunch was the first order of business.
Making new friends!
Ferris wheels and bumper cars!
Annika trying out her first roller coaster and me realizing the wisdom of the other parents not volunteering to join the kids on the log ride; got a bit more than a mist on that one.
It was a fun afternoon, especially since visiting a theme park in Guatemala City was not on our radar before we arrived.
The sunset over the park was quite wonderful.
Another thing we learned about Guatemala is that they love their fireworks. I think every night we were there, there was some fireworks going off. A lot of times it was just a string of bang and pop fireworks, but they also will use any excuse to set off the large ones as well. It was mid-December and some company was sponsoring fireworks downtown that night. The traffic would be too crazy to get right close to the launch spot so we drove back to Cayala, that new old style shopping area to try and see the fireworks from there. It was a fun way to end off the night.
It was a full week but it warmed our hearts to be able to volunteer and see so many different sides of Guatemala City and to really interact with the warm and gracious people of this country.